Garifuna
The Garifuna people are an Afro-Indigenous people of mixed free African and Amerindian ancestry that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and traditionally speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language.
The Garifuna are the descendants of Indigenous Arawak and Kalinago people, and Afro-Caribbean people. The founding population of the Central American diaspora, estimated at 2,500 to 5,000 persons, were transplanted to Roatán from Saint Vincent, which was known to the Garinagu as Yurumein, in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Small Garifuna communities still live in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The Garifuna diaspora abroad includes communities in Honduras, the United States, and Belize.
Name
In the Garifuna language, the endonym Garínagu refers to the people as a whole and the term Garífuna refers to an individual person, the culture, and the language. The terms Garífuna and Garínagu originated as African modifications of the Kalinago terms Karifuna and Kalinago respectively. The terms may have been used by the Garifuna to refer to themselves as early as the mid-17th century.The Garifuna were historically known by the exonyms Caribs, Black Caribs, and Island Caribs. European explorers began to use the term Black Caribs in the 17th century. In the 18th century, English accounts used the terms Black Caribs and Yellow or Red Caribs to differentiate, with some ambiguity, two groups with a similar culture by their skin color. The British colonial use of the term Black Carib, particularly in William Young's Account of the Black Charaibs, has been described in modern historiography as framing the majority of the Indigenous St. Vincent population as "mere interlopers from Africa" who lacked claims to land possession in St. Vincent.
History
Carib background
The Carib people migrated from South America to the Caribbean circa 1200, according to carbon dating of artifacts. According to Taíno testimonies, the Kalinago largely displaced, exterminated and assimilated the Taíno who were resident on the islands at the time, as well as the earlier Igneri.17th century
The French missionary Raymond Breton arrived in the Lesser Antilles in 1635, and lived in Guadeloupe and Dominica until 1653. He took ethnographic and linguistic notes on the native peoples of these islands, including St. Vincent, which he visited briefly.In 1635 the Carib were overwhelmed by French forces led by the adventurer Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc and his nephew Jacques Dyel du Parquet. Cardinal Richelieu of France gave the island to the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe, in which he was a shareholder. Later the company was reorganized as the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique. The French colonists imposed French Law on the inhabitants, and Jesuit missionaries arrived to convert them to the Catholic Church.
Because the Carib people resisted working as laborers to build and maintain the sugar and cocoa plantations which the French began to develop in the Caribbean, in 1636, Louis XIII proclaimed La Traité des Noirs. This authorized the capture and purchase of enslaved people from sub-Saharan Africa and their transportation as labor to Martinique and other parts of the French West Indies.
In 1650, the company liquidated, selling Martinique to Jacques Dyel du Parquet, who became governor. He held this position until his death in 1658. His widow Mme. du Parquet took over control of the island from France. As more French colonists arrived, they were attracted to the fertile area known as Cabesterre. The French had pushed the remaining Carib people to this northeastern coast and the Caravalle Peninsula, but the colonists wanted the additional land. The Jesuits and the Dominicans agreed that whichever order arrived there first, would get all future parishes in that part of the island. The Jesuits came by sea and the Dominicans by land, with the Dominicans ultimately prevailing.
When the Carib revolted against French rule in 1660, Governor Charles Houël du Petit Pré retaliated with war against them. Many were killed; those who survived were taken captive and expelled from the island. On Martinique, the French colonists signed a peace treaty with the few remaining Carib. Some Carib had fled to Dominica and Saint Vincent, where the French agreed to leave them at peace.
William Young's Report on St. Vincent
After the arrival of the English to St. Vincent in 1667, English officer John Scott wrote a report for the English Crown noting that St. Vincent was populated by Caribs and a small number of Africans from shipwrecked Spanish vessels. Later, in 1795, the British governor of St. Vincent, William Young, noted in his report to the British Crown that the island had populations of Africans who arrived after the wreck of two Spanish slave ships near St. Vincent in 1635. These ships were bound for the West Indies.According to Young's report, the Africans aboard the shipwrecked vessels, largely from the Ibibio ethnic group of modern-day Nigeria, survived the wreck and reached the island, living independently. Contrary to some historical accounts, these Africans were never enslaved and were not captured by the Caribs. Instead, they formed independent communities that gradually integrated with Indigenous peoples of the island. Over time, these Afro-Indigenous communities developed into the Garifuna people, a distinct cultural group with a unique language, traditions, and identity.
Modern historiography
Several modern researchers have rejected the theory espoused by Young. According to them, most of the enslaved people who arrived in Saint Vincent actually came from other Caribbean islands, and had settled in Saint Vincent in order to escape slavery, therefore Maroons came from plantations on nearby islands. Although most of the enslaved people came from Barbados, but they also came from places such as St. Lucia and Grenada. The Bajans and Saint Lucians arrived on the island before 1735. Later, after 1775, most of the enslaved people who arrived from other islands were Saint Lucians and Grenadians. After arriving on the island, they were taken in by the Caribs, who offered them protection, assisted them and, eventually mixed with them.In addition to the African refugees, the Caribs captured enslaved people from neighboring islands, while they were fighting against the British and the French. Many of the captured enslaved people were integrated into their communities. After the African rebellion against the Caribs, and their escape to the mountains, over time, according to Itarala, Africans would come down from the mountains to have sexual intercourse with Amerindian women - perhaps because most Africans were men - or to search for other kinds of food. The sexual activity did not necessarily lead to marriage. On the other hand, if the Maroons abducted Arauaco-Caribbean women or married them, is another of the contradictions between the French documents and the oral history of the Garinagu. Andrade Coelho states that "...whatever the case, the Caribs never consented to give their daughters in marriage to blacks". Conversely, Sebastian R. Cayetano argues that "Africans were married with women Caribs of the islands, giving birth to the Garifuna". According to Charles Gullick some Caribs mixed peacefully with the Maroons and some not, creating two factions, that of the Black Caribs and that of the Yellow Caribs, who fought on more than one occasion in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to Itarala, many intermarried between Indigenous and African people, which was that which caused the origin of the Black Caribs.
18th century
Britain and France both made conflicting claims on Saint Vincent from the late seventeenth century onward. French pioneers began informally cultivating plots on the island around 1710. In 1719 the governor of the French colony of Martinique sent a military force to occupy it, but was repulsed by the Carib inhabitants. A British attempt in 1723 was likewise repelled. In 1748, Britain and France agreed to put aside their claims and declared Saint Vincent to be a neutral island, under no European sovereignty. Throughout this period, however, unofficial, mostly French settlement took place on the island, especially on the Leeward side. African escapees continued to reach Saint Vincent, and a mixed-race population developed through unions with the Carib.In 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, Britain gained control over Saint Vincent following its defeat of France in the Seven Years' War, fought in Europe, Asia and North America. It also took over all French territory in North America east of the Mississippi River. Through the rest of the century, the Carib-African natives mounted a series of Carib Wars, which were encouraged and supported by the French.
Carib wars
When in 1627 the English began to claim the St. Vincent island, they opposed the French settlements and its partnerships with the Caribs. In 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, Britain gained control over Saint Vincent. Over time, tensions began to arise between the Caribs and the Europeans. The governor of the English part of the island, William Young, complained that the Black Caribs had the best land and they had no right to live there. Moreover, the friendship of the French settlers with the Black Caribs, drove them, even though they had also tried to stay with San Vicente, tried to support them in their struggle. All this caused the "War Caribbean". The First Carib War began in 1769. Led primarily by Black Carib chieftain Joseph Chatoyer, the Caribs successfully defended the windward side of the island against a military survey expedition in 1769, and rebuffed repeated demands that they sell their land to representatives of the British colonial government. The effective defense of the Caribs, the British ignorance of the region and London opposition to the war made this be halted. With military matters at a stalemate, a peace agreement was signed in 1773 that delineated boundaries between British and Carib areas of the island. The treaty delimited the area inhabited by the Caribs, and demanded repayment of the British and French plantations of runaway enslaved people who took refuge in St. Vincent. This last clause, and the prohibition of trade with neighbouring islands, so little endeared the Caribs. Three years later, the French supported American independence ; the Caribs aligned against the British. Apparently, in 1779 the Caribs inspired such terror to the British that surrender to the French was preferable than facing the Caribs in battle.Later, in 1795, the Caribs again rebelled against British control of the island, causing the Second Carib War. Despite the odds being against them, the Caribs successfully gained control of most of the island except for the immediate area around Kingstown, which was saved from direct assault on several occasions by the timely arrival of British reinforcements. British efforts to penetrate and control the interior and windward areas of the island were repeatedly frustrated by incompetence, disease, and effective Carib defences, which were eventually supplemented by the arrival of some French troops. A major military expedition by General Ralph Abercromby was eventually successful in defeating the Carib opposition in 1796.
After the war was concluded and the Caribs surrendered, the British authorities decided to deport the Caribs of St. Vincent. This was done to avoid the Caribs causing more slave revolts in St. Vincent. In 1797, the Caribs with African features were chosen to be deported as they were considered the cause of the revolt, and originally exported to Jamaica, and then they were transported to the island of Roatan in Honduras. Meanwhile, the Black Caribs with higher Amerindian traits were allowed to remain on the island. More than 5,000 Black Caribs were deported, but when the deportees landed on Roatan on April 12, 1797, only about 2,500 had survived the trip to the islands. After settling in the Honduras, they expanded along the Caribbean coast of Central America, coming to Belize and Guatemala to the north, and the south to Nicaragua. Over time, the Black Caribs would denominate in the mainland of Central America as "Garifuna".